A lot of our clients are very focused on lead generation. One, two, three clients can be worth $30K-$40K dollars to them so they could miss that opportunity to get that lead. Sucuri pays for itself in the first month. It’d take ten years of paying for your service pretty much to pay for one lead - if you don’t miss a lead because your sites hacked, that’s a big deal.

About

David Forman is the lead developer of Clarity Creative Group, located in Orlando, Florida. His expertise lies in web development - PHP, HTML, CSS and the like - while occasional dabbling in setting up servers. David definitely knows the nuts and bolts of building a website.

In 2013, when WordPress really skyrocketed, so did Clarity Creative Group. David hopped on the WordPress bandwagon by steadily adding more websites. For him, WordPress was the perfect blend of a pre-built package with PHP and HTML - components he was accustomed to working with regularly.

You build it, set it up with usernames and passwords, and believe it’ll be fine to walk away from for six months. Then all of a sudden one day, it’s not.

Challenge

During this busy, thriving time, David received a panicky email from a client asking why their website was redirecting to a site selling gold Rolexes overseas. On David’s end, the site appeared normal. He assured them there was no need to worry since they were also safe behind the server, when in fact, the problem was real.

The client said, no, the logo is gone, along with almost every other image on the page. There’s nothing but watches.

David couldn’t believe it. This was something he had never experienced. There never was this kind of injection issue when his team built everything by themselves. Back then, they weren’t using anyone else’s code that needed to be updated. He had heard about sites getting hacked but believed he was smart and safe - he was using the best security practices - paid plugin solutions and only well-vetted, quality themes.

Although, he was doing the right things, it apparently wasn’t enough. At the time, an aggressive Revslider vulnerability had allowed attackers to take over a site completely. He needed help to figure this out in how to restore it. For David’s clients the most important concern was maintaining a steady stream of leads. It would cost thousands of dollars in potential revenue with a malfunctioning site. The need for better website security suddenly became a very high priority.

The most valuable part of using Sucuri is knowing that we have protection for all our client sites. It allows us to focus on what we do best - web design and digital marketing. I looked into web security and realized that it was a full-time job to have to scan and learn to remove malware.

Solution

David first heard about Sucuri through various blogs he followed and remembered how it helped with hacked sites and malware removal/install. Immediately, David scoured his RSS feed and signed up.

Sucuri offered me one set price. Truly affordable for a smaller, mid-size business to easily stomach. Sucuri was well reviewed - no negative thing of what it offered. I didn’t have to have three or four services or different vendors. It works so easy. The service is well worth it. Almost too good to be true. But it is. They’re legit and provide for their people.

Within 24 hours his client’s site was back up and running. In the grand scheme of things, David thought it best to add ten more sites to the Sucuri Agency plan.

To me it was a no brainer when that happened, though it felt to me too good to be true. It was less about - oh, my other sites look good - it was more about running a scan on them for Revslider to see if there were other things patched, removed, or updated. Sucuri saved me.

Though David informs his clients they have Sucuri’s service for their website, it can be hard to get them to understand the true value of ongoing protection and security scans before a hack becomes an issue. There are also other clients who have their passwords hacked or their account gets taken over. With hands seemingly tied, David used to do whatever he could to assist from the agency side but if a client didn’t take care of their passwords or their security on their end, the site had the potential of getting hacked too.

By having Sucuri, the few times a client’s website has gotten hacked, we were able to get the site cleaned up quickly without losing any rankings, thanks to the fast warning and even quicker malware removal team. It has kept my clients happy and us out of the dog house.

All 25 sites in their Sucuri agency package are treated the same way by individually being monitored for indicators of compromise and protected by the Sucuri Firewall. As an agency, having Sucuri has provided a vantage point against other competitors.

There’s other security protection companies out there but a lot of them just scan or just tell you there’s something wrong and here’s your bill for a few hundred dollars to fix it. But there’s a big gap in telling and solving. Sucuri is a little bit of both. They do so much behind the scenes. They fix it when problems do arise. Sucuri is all together lumped into one.

Results

Now, David doesn’t have to focus on the ins and outs of website security, instead he can spend more time in creating quality projects. He enjoys the weekly reporting system; documents he can send to his clients with uptime monitoring which lists the performance of the server, files loading, and the sites that get more bandwidth. Plus, there is a user-friendly dashboard showing the status of all their accounts, along with any warnings. It gives his clients a pulse check on what’s going on with their server and sites - something they never had before.

Before all this, I stressed every single day about where are our sites at. Are they up, are they down, are they hacked, is there a problem? Having this service allows me to step back from that fear. I can focus on finding new clients and create new relationships. It also allows us now as a company to get bigger, better clients because we offer better server solution versus regular shared hosting plans they were on where getting hacked. I’m not in any way a security expert, but I know we have a secure hosting solution that can protect you. I could never say that before.

He also appreciates the Sucuri Firewall protecting his sites. By having a checkbox that says Sucuri is securing all the sites he manages gives David peace of mind that the client can avoid future issues. His clients say that they like the overall transparency Clarity Creative Group provides in its security practices. David owes that to Sucuri.

I would compare Sucuri to having insurance, but for your website. You don't think you need it until something goes terribly wrong and you realize how expensive it would’ve been to not have it. It’s an upfront investment to protect you from having your site go down and not be functional and then rushing to fix things and losing leads.